


oh, how it turns around like a wheel

by SearchingforSerendipity



Category: Hamlet - All Media Types, Hamlet - Shakespeare, Romeo And Juliet - Shakespeare, SHAKESPEARE William - Works
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-28
Updated: 2016-05-28
Packaged: 2018-07-10 19:22:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,672
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7002163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SearchingforSerendipity/pseuds/SearchingforSerendipity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some days he envies the Lovers of Verona. Their love is lauded and cried over, the foundation of peace and prosperity. Some days he longs for that last swallow of poison, and hates the one who told him to live.</p><p> All that assuages him those days is Violetta's presence, the promise he stretches longer and longer. Soon, he tells himself, to the phantom touch of love in his chest, soon.</p><p> </p><p>Horatio, the child Ophelia might or might not have been carrying,  and Verona, in three acts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	oh, how it turns around like a wheel

 

 

**Act I**

 

  
_"For Hamlet, and the trifling of his favour,_  
Hold it a fashion, and a toy in blood;  
A violet in the youth of primy nature,  
Forward, not permanent- sweet, not lasting;  
The perfume and suppliance of a minute;  
No more."

_[I, iii]_

 

\--

Denmark's ground is not softened by grief. Even in high spring the ground proves unyielding to a grave-diggers arms. Even in high spring, it is night more oft than not, cold enough to hollow bones, one shiver at a time

\--

Horatio's hands are bloody, elbows sticky with red. He stumbles down the castle walls, down, down towards the forests and the hills and the running river. He does not see his way; his sight lies behind with his heart and Hamlet's cooling body. The canons had stopped their booming hours before, but still he feels as if the air stills trembles with it. Not just the air; the earth wavers under his feat and his bones seem to ache, longing for eternal rest, peace, sleep. Anything to make things as they were.

His throat is dry as bark from having spoken so long and so arduously to the new King's court, withholding as much truths as he dared, painting the supernatural into more mundane, earthy forms. It is foul business, lying to a monarch so, but there is nothing in this place not foul. He wants only to leave it even as he hopes against sense to catch a glimpse of his prince's phantom. Fortrinbas had invited him to stay, also, in that royal way of his that was more of an order than a request, so he is a guest without leave to part, a prisoner with no chains. With nothing else to de, he walks, heedless of the singing birds and blooming flowers.

He almost misses the basket.

As it is, by some divine vestige of kindness at the end of this ungodly horror, or because he had spent to long dodging Fortune, he sees it out of the corner of his eyes he left a red riptide behind him as he waddle among the reeds. A stronger current pushes the basket away: he swims, blinks away the water, catches it and nearly tilts the babe to the water.

It is a small thing, ugly in the way new-made being are. Like a chick, it has a head of feathery head, and like a chick it chirps weakly, little mouth opening and closing for sustenance. Around it, a bed of flowers. Rosemary, some pansies, a few rues, violets and daisies and the braided steams of columbine and fennel.

It is a violet that the child holds on its puny first. It cannot see Horatio, but it seems aware of the flower, and waves it vaguely in his direction. Horatio recognizes the gesture, the basket, the fine slope of the child's nose. It weights nothing at all when he cradles it close to his heart, and doesn't seem to mind the water and blood in his tunic.

\--

He names her Violetta, for the never-offered flower, so that she may never wither for another's sake. A contrary name, as fits as bastard. She is terribly ill at first, but when she heal he knows she will be a long lasting one.

\--

Her second name is his own. There is no one alive to say Horatio has sired a bastard, no one alive to say she is anything but the last gift of his dead beloved. It is not even a lie.

Dead mothers, he finds, are very easy to excuse, as long as they fall in the birthing bed and no mention is made of hungry streams.

\--

The road is long, unmerciful. They ride for days on end, Violetta curled up on his cloak, his chest her cradle. He keeps away from roads when he can, but most often than not he spends his time on some lonely village or other, splurging his coins on paying midwives and healers, a warm hearth and goat milk. Traveling with a babe is difficult, and he is fearful, paranoid that some cunning ploy of the new king might catch up with them. He doubts anyone had known of the child - Hamlet head suspected, he thinks, mayhaps the ladies bother, so ardent in his defense of her.

Thinking that his dear prince might have knowingly spurned the mother of his child, when there was always the option of marriage, honor, responsibility, pains him. So he does not think on it. 

He is dead inside, eternally cold, he is certain of it. The only spot of warm comes from the babe, Violetta (an Italian name, the first stitch on a great tapestry of lies), a little breathing pup with harsh lungs and watery coughs.

He he had not thought to ever feel anything more than despair, the moments after Hamlet's last breath, but this in between of terror and awe and grief is slow torture. The babe breaths still, so he cannot give in to grief. In the end, he does not doubt that is what saves him. 

The horse rears when they reach the top of the hill. Beyound, the valley, the sea, Verona in its midday glory. It shines distantly, then closer. Horatio does not bother stopping his tears when the great wrought gate closed behind them with a grating noise. 

  
_“I would give you some violets, but they withered all when my father died…”_

 _[IV, v]_  
\--

  
**Act II**

 

 

Verona is as good a place to raise a child as any, in these times. Armies swell and kings boast, prayers turn to oaths, and in Verona, Violetta grows up beautiful and quiet, demure only when it suits her. He keeps her away from rivers and graveyards, feeds her scrolls and good sense. There is nothing she loves more than when there are new plays at the theater, and not a day goes by that she does not make a new song or clever limerick all on her own.

She has a terrible voice, which she uses at every chance, never apologizing for strain on his poor ears. Neither of her parents was any good at apologizing either, and he can no more resent her than he can them.

Horatio learns to live for her happiness. He loves her like she was his own blood, regardless of the blood she carries; he makes certain she learns all the names of his distant family and never speaks of Hamlets and Gertudes.

When she asks after her mother, he lies.

\--

Some days he envies the Lovers of Verona. Their love is lauded and cried over, the foundation of peace and prosperity. Some days he longs for that last swallow of poison, and hates the one who told him to live.

Some days he thinks of his oath, of the story he hoards close to himself, and fells as a lier, a wretch. All that assuages him those days is Violetta's presence, the promise he stretches longer and longer. _Soon_ , he tells himself, to the phantom touch of love in his chest, _soon_.

\--

Time runs fast, and other springs come and bloom and turn to Summer. Verona's peace holds, thin and jagged as all things of grief made. Outside its walls the world moves unflinchingly on. Inside, Horatio learns to teach, to cheer a solemn child, to love the bright days and live through the overcast ones. Those are the ones Violetta prefers, the Italian summer storms that scour the land. The skeleton of the world rattles while they last and when they leave the very air tastes of clouds and clay.

On one such day, on his first year working at the University, too poor yet not to take his own purse to the market after hiding away at home from the lightening and the slanted rain, he turns around to look for Violetta. For a heartbeat, two, three, he cannot find her, and the terror rises acrid on his mouth. Fatherhood is one third patience and two thirds freight, or perhaps it is only his.

When he hears the sound of uneven laughter. There she is, his daughter, to whose voice the blushing of womanhood had not been kind. A Lady speaks to her, elegantly clad in expensive silks, tall headdress crowning a head of greying hair.

Lady Rosalina is not as lovely as when she was a maid, as indeed is the faith of all maids cursed with age. She is scant a husband and rich with two sons, as rich as any boys can be. He knows them, gay children with easy tempers and easy smiles, bad students both. He tells her so. She smiles and says she knew that already, voice serene and eyes arch.

Violetta already looks at her like a daughter. Horatio brushes his robes and readies his smile as well.

\--

Sometimes he is almost too scared to leave the house. He lies awake at night among cheap bedding, counting the manners this lie he has built for himself and this child could go fell. Treason hisses in his ears, never more so than when he heard some rum our from the land of his birth.

They say Fotrinbas is a godless despot, who revels in brutish delights. _The Butcher-King_ , the dans call his, and shift restlessly under their yoke. _If only Hamlet had not been mad_ , some fur merchants sigh at the fair. _If only there was a true heir, if only we had a Dane our own, if only--_

Daughters are no heirs, women cannot inherit, bastards even less so. But that is a lie; stronger and older laws than the Normand ones bind the northern Danes, and if there was power behind the name, a prove of legitimacy, a prospect of wealth, allies, the bearing and heritage of a shieldmaiden like the Valkyries of old--

Heresy and madness. Horatio turns over. The cicadas drown out his thoughts, but he rarely sleeps.

\--

He teaches her to fight. Ladies do not take up arms, but common girls hath better have some manner of defense, for the good of their virtue. Verona, merchant city that is is, has seen stranger costumes pass it streets. A father making a warrior out of his daughter is not to terrible a secret, if well kept. Horatio, not a prideful man by nature, knows himself to be an excellent secret keeper, for good or ill. 

Violetta loves it, even more than theater and poetry and chess. She's a devil with the falchion, the dagger, yields the bow better than Hamlet ever did. The first time she bleeds him Horatio is proud enough to take flight.

He buys her a new book of sonnets. They read it together on storm-swept nights.

 

\--

  
_Lay her i' the earth:_  
And from her fair and unpolluted flesh  
May violets spring!

_[V, i]_

  
\--

  
**Act III**

 

 

Verona is beautiful in autumn. Verona is beautiful always, but especially so with waning sunlight glinting of gilded roofs and fresh fountains. It paints the ground burgundy and good, softens the sky into sharper blues. A cool wind drifts through the streets, blowing inside an half-open window of the university.

Between its walls a man stands in front and high in the pulpit. A five scores of young noble heir listen to him, remarkably awake for their ilk of idle students. But this is not any other class and this is not any old professor.

He is not old. He is tired, slouched sideways, eyes fish-like, soft as river mud. When he speaks the boys lean towards him, flowers wracked by a shivering draft.

"I pray, oh youthful bulls," he begins, "listen sharp and hold closely to my words, if ever you intend to stand as if against one of the interred restless." A smile flickers on thin lips. " Your first lesson is as I preach: remember always, lungless lungs speak only treachery. What does not draw breath knows not how to treasure its every rattle. "

"But care take thou must. For dire are days when the living lie as dead already, and those of noble heart fall willingly to their final slumber."

\---

His first work had been as a bookkeeper, a hard position to bargain for, in times of such guild competition. The traits of a Wittenberg alumni serve him well, even if he is the only one to know his alma mater. He rises quickly, never as quickly as he would like to feed and clothe a princess. Sense and frugality prevail, and in time his fortune grows. He finds, to some surprise, that his youthful habit of wagering has its uses in commerce, and that a well-learned man can find an opening anywhere, if he has the charm and wits for it. As he has never had charm, he relies on wits, and they serve him well enough.

There is a greater space for ascension in Verona than most any place In Chrintendom. It is where fools and wiseman both go to be on Fortune. Horatio's cannot tell which one he is, but it is true the city has served him well. No more is it breached apart by feuding faction, and indeed the two enemy houses of youce now grow as closely together as pruned rose bushes, laced together from the stump of loss. Montagues and Capulets alike pal mecena to the university, a most generous continuity to their infamous rivalry, sending representants to visit at times. None of the ones Horatio had so briefly met lived to recognize him, but when, on the early moths of his tenure as a teacher, Prince Escalus visited the university, they spoke to some length on maters of spirit and mortality.

Horatio might not be wise anymore, if he ever was. He takes the warning to heart, makes certain not to let Violetta out at night. Tempting blood is as witless as daring God.

  
\--

Still. The days grow shorter, nights lengthen and arrive like too-earner guests. He finds Violetta on the roof, staring at the stars and humming. The row they have afterwards is the worst so far.

But nothing happens, praise the Lord, and she continues as happy as a child of thoughtful disposition can be. Horatio's dares breath a sigh of relief, and that September they rise beyond the city walls to the great Manses, where Lady Rosalina had invited then for apple picking. They return home with sweetened tempers and strengthened friendships. Lady Rosamund walked long in the mornings and afternoons with him, down lush gardens and ripe orchards, so full of life he too felt something in him rise grow from salted earth and bloom.

Finally, finally, Horatio dares to breathe.

\--

That afternoon he comes home to song. Violetta is dancing in the garden, twirling around like in the arms of a fine lord, giggling in a way most unlike her when she trips on invisible feet. Horatio, ensnared in thoughts of the merits of his new class of students, wondering at what new anecdote to write Lady Rosalind about on his next letters, takes a long moment to understand his eyes. The iron fence falls closed behind him, and he fails at not shivering in the cool twilight.

"Father!" She cries out when she sees him. There's a cloying sweet scent in the air, rotting or poison or both, coming from the woven crown in her fine head. "Come, sweet Father, look! Signor Montague hath taken upon himself to teach steps of dance. How great a teacher is he, and how terrible a student I am! But his lady wife hath made me a crown, and named me friend."

Her smile is soft as petals when she twirls for him, bare feet digging in the ground, hard. The wind blows her words to him, north by northwest, homeward bound.

"Is it not so queenly a gift?"

 

\--

 

_OPHELIA  
You’re supposed to sing, “A down a-down,” and you, “Call him a-down-a.” Oh, how it turns around like a wheel! Like the worker who stole his boss’s daughter._

[IV, v]

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you, William Shakespeare, for being so incredibly awesome. You rock, bro.
> 
> About the theory of Ophelia being pregnant, there's actually a lot of good reasons for it, it's pretty fascinating. The symbology of violets in the play was also something I drew upon for the quotes. 
> 
> Come say hi to me on tumblr.


End file.
